


Inquisitor's Thousand and One Nights

by NorroenDyrd



Series: Storied Past, Storied Present [3]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Arabian Nights - Freeform, Established Relationship, F/M, Feels, Hair Braiding, Hair Brushing, POV Cremisius "Krem" Aclassi, Romance, Storytelling, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-03-01 05:47:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13288272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorroenDyrd/pseuds/NorroenDyrd
Summary: Inqusitor Lavellan tells Cassandra stories, always finishing with a cliffhanger like the crafty girl from Tevinter a fairy-tale Krem remembers from childhood. Only in Lavellan's case, the motivation behind this little trick is rather different.





	Inquisitor's Thousand and One Nights

Sometimes, when he keeps watch at the campsite, slouching on a tree stump or a pile of springy fir branches, sewing yet another dragon plushie to add to the pile that the chief is currently cuddling with in his tent (his snores so loud that the flimsy canvas triangle keeps leaping a few inches up in the air), Krem suddenly finds himself remembering a story he heard as a child.  
  
It was about a magister who had become so enraged with his wife for being unfaithful to him, that he set off a pack of demons to rip her apart. And every day since then, he would grant freedom to one of his many female slaves, and wed her - and on the dawn of their first night together, he would repeat the bloody demon trick to make sure that the poor thing would never, ever cheat on him (which must have made his marble palace floors quite a pain to scrub). But then, a day came when one of the girls brought to him turned out to be a mage, meaning that she had been allowed to learn how to read, and had studied many different tomes futheirf fascinating stories. And so she started telling these stories to the magister, always making sure to break off at the most interesting part right at the moment when the gaps between the inky-black ornate towerlets on the horizon turned greenish-yellow with the first inklings of sunrise. This went on for exactly one thousand and one nights, and by the time the young mage had finally run out of stories, the magister was so deeply in live with her wit and beauty that he abandoned his evil ways and lived with her happily ever after.  
  
Normally, Krem would not go out of his way to recollect the details of this old fairy-tale, because his mother would tell it to him as an illustration of how far smarts and charm can take a girl, and that always left a bad taste in his mouth. But these days, he cannot help but dwell on it - in a completely new light, too. Because of the way Varric keeps teasing Seeker Cassandra about her relationship with the Inquisitor.  
  
The thing is, this elf has lived a frightfully long life. Dalish says that their People do not live for hundreds of years any more, but Master Enasalin Lavellan still must have plenty of decades at least under his belt, with the web of thread-thin lines around his eyes and streaks of grey weaving through his black hair. And every day of that long life of his was apparently packed full with the most breathtaking adventures, so that if the Chargers and the Inquisitor ever had a bragging contest, Krem is not even certain who’d win (even if they used that ogre story as the secret ace up their sleeve).  
  
When Enasalin was a teenager, he fancied himself a bit of a vifilante defending the poor city folk (Skinner always curls her lips at the idealism, but mellows when he reaches the part where he killed a human). As his attempts to be a hero got him into trouble (which had to do with that human-killing, but the Inquisitor always gets kind of stingy with the specifics at that point), he was separated from his clan for many years, and spent most of his youth, up to the point when he finally got reunited with his forest-dwelling kin and got the traditional face markings, going through a motley assortment of jobs. From dock worker in Kirkwall’s harbour - which was where he built up those steely muscles of his; not quite as huge as the chief’s, but impressive for an elf. To an actual, honest to goodness (or badness, depending on who you ask) pirate - which is why the palms of his big, long-fingered hands are so coarse and split across with deep scars from pulling ropes, and his tattooed face is so deeply bronzed and weather-worn.  
  
He grows a bit sad when he recollects his past lives, upon the nudging of someone like Varric or Sera (or chief, who is very, very eager to know if the Inquisitor has encountered any ‘badass sea monsters’); his eyes turn glassy and still like pools of silver against the dark brown of his skin, and at times, he says quietly to the chief,  
  
'The Qunari would probably hate me… I have tried out so many roles that I can no longer figure out who I really am…’  
  
To which the big horned arse (Krem means it with utmost affection, of course) usually grins and gives the Inquisitor a slap on the shoulder that even such a buff elf can barely withstand without getting squished up like a mushroom someone’s stepped on.  
  
'A damn good world savior, that’s who you are’, he chuckles, crinkling up his only eye.  
  
That makes the Inquisitor lighten up somewhat - but his gaze and voice only ever get truly filled with life when Lady Seeker is in the audience. It even gets awkward after a while, being witness to such a special moment between the two of them, when he talks, and she listens, and both grow kind of flushed and breathless, as if they are struggling to contain the explosion of happy sparkles that their bodies might dissolve in at any moment (Krem wonders if random onlookers see the same thing when they catch him getting lost in Maryden’s… songs; that would have given him some solace, because he sure feels like an idiot when he snaps out of it and realizes that he has been sticking the neck of his bottle into his eye or ear instead of his mouth).  
  
And they drown even deeper in the sparkliness when they are alone. That is what Varric says.  
  
Maker knows how the dwarf got wind of what the Inquisitor and his Seeker do in solitude (he’ll do anything to collect research material for his upcoming book about the gang’s world-saving adventures, that’s for sure), and frankly, it is rather impolite to spy on them like that. But Krem still smiles, in spite of himself, when he thinks back to how Varric would describe these two. Sitting among the fluffed-up pillows of that bed the cute ambassador commissioned for the Inquisitor’s quarters, all bathed in soft pink and gold light coming in through the stained glass windows, with Cassandra combing the elf’s hair hich he usually wears in an elaborate combination of buns and braids like Lace Harding, to get it out of his eyes when he wields his bow in battle, but sometimes lets loose, so that it falls down his dark, squarish, freckled shoulders like a shower of salt and pepper. Sera likes to joke about him hiding in it to sneak up on people, disguised as a sleek chunk of basalt or something; and Seeker Cassandra grows downright speechless when she watches the flow of the Inquisitor’s mane - and not just, Krem imagines, because she tries to figure out how long it took him to grow it all (like Krem himself does sometimes).  
  
And during the combing, the Inquisitor tells his stories. Always making sure to break off at the most interesting part right at the moment when the brief spell of respite ends and he and Cassandra have to pack up and leave Skyhold again. To close another rift, or cut down another blood mage, or lead the folk from another burning village to safety. He uses clever cliffhangers just like that mage from the fairy-tale did. Only - and this is what makes Krem so pensive - for the Inquisitor, this is not a trick to ensure that an evil mistress doesn’t feed him to demons. This is a promise.  
  
A promise that he will survive the day ahead, and will be back to pick up the story where he left off. And that Cassandra will be there to listen.


End file.
